CCR + Thank You

    The CCR is officially exported and done. 

    Presenting, my Creative Critical Reflection.

    If that link doesn't work, use this Google Drive link.

My Very Final Words

     Editing this definitely took up my whole Sunday, but I am happy with how it turned out. I should say that all my mentions about editing throughout these eight weeks aren't me complaining, I actually really enjoy editing, but it just consumes me.  Once I start editing, I cannot stop, and then my whole day is gone. I just wanted to make this clear before this post, my final posting ever, goes up. 

    I hope you enjoy both my film opening and my CCR. A BIG thank you for following me on this 56-day journey. 

    This has been your blogger, Zoey, signing off!

The FINAL Product

    After many, many weeks of rewatching the same clips and rearranging them in the most minuscule way. I have finally exported my film opening.

    Introducing, for the first time, Temporarily Forever. Make sure the quality is at 1080p!

   

If the YouTube link doesn't work for whatever reason, try out this link instead. 

I hope you enjoy it!

Final Thoughts

    We finally made it to the end. After a long eight weeks of thinking, filming, editing, and planning, I have made it to the final stretch. As one of my final blog posts, I want to reflect on key moments and large changes that I had to make.

    A large change I had to make was the filming and editing of the film opening. Lots of the shots that I had planned were very challenging to film, so I had to improvise and set up new shots. As a result, this changed how I edited my film and how it looked different than I had originially envisioned.

    On top of editing, when I had put together all my clips and cropped all the shots, the final time was: 3 minutes and 10 seconds... yeah. This made me realize I had to make my shots tighter or cut our parts of the story. A good solution that I came up with, which I learned from editing the Music Marketing Project, was to make one scene have a bunch of cuts to not only shorten the video down, but also make the editing faster paced. This was a lifesaver for me and by doing this to mutliple scenes, I was able to get the video down to 2 minutes and 12 seconds. 

    One of the obstacles that I ran into was with the credits, iMovie has these texts that are included in the software, but they have transitions at the beginning and end of them that I was not a fan of and I couldn't get rid of. Because of this, I had to find another way to add credits the way I liked it. I had to create a Google Slides and make the background green, screenshot it, and then import it to iMovie, then set the image as a green screen. I talk more about this in my CCR, which even includes a screen recording of how I did it.

    I'll say that this process was a lot less stressful than I thought it would be, but having to make this CCR might make me stand corrected. However, despite that, these past eight weeks of creating this film opening went way better than I expected and I'm super happy with how it all turned out.

Changes to CCR + Organizing Thoughts

     During class today, we went over the Creative Critical Reflection and I got a better understanding of how it should be. Seeing the examples in class was very helpful for reference on how to produce it all together. I enjoy the aspect of speaking to the camera and then cutting to different visuals. That might make it easier to edit. 

    I decided that I'm going to put a hold on creating the presentation and instead, I'm going to focus on finishing the script, and then I will create the presentation, since I have a couple different ideas and I'm not sure how I'll approach it yet. Oh, also, my internet is STILL out so I'm back at Panera Bread trying to finish this script. 

     The four compulsory questions are my main focus at the moment, so I've been thinking about how I will answer these questions within my CCR.

    For the first question about genre conventions, coming-of-age genres are mainly following the journey of someone who, by the of the movie, will have developed as a person. I think my film opening matches the conventions of this genre since the subsequent plot will show how the main character grew as a person. I do think one way that opening challenges the whole movie industry, is the representation of race. As the main character is Asian, this goes against how Hollywood mainly consists of white people.

    In the second question that talks about target audience and distribution, I'm going to emphasize that my film opening is geared towards teenagers and more specifically girls. For distribution, I would say that my film should be given exposure through film festivals, YouTube, Vimeo, etc.

    The third question is about developed production skills. I'll start by discussing my work with research and storyboarding. My approach to production was planned out well, and filming went pretty smoothly. I would say that editing was a difficult part since some of the shots didn't look as good as I had hoped or I had to shorten the opening through faster-paced editing, and these are some of the major changes I had to make.

    The fourth question talks about the different technology I used. The major software I used would be iMovie, Google Docs, Google Slides, Blogger, and the internet. Some hardware I used is a phone and tripod. I would say some obstacles would be adding text to iMovie, setting up the tripod, etc.

    Then for the ending, I learned a lot about editing and the software I have used. If given the chance, next time, I would maybe try to experiment with another editing software. Finally, a major thing I would try to improve is not procrastinating filming! 

Now that all my thoughts are put together, hopefully, this will make writing the script a lot easier. My next couple of blog posts will be the final ones, a bittersweet moment.

    

    

CCR: Work in Progress

     On my last day of spring break, I went to Panera Bread and I was able to make huge progress on my Creative Critical Reflection. I started to organize my thoughts and the answers to the four questions. I also started the presentation that I will record and have a voiceover too. Just so happens that my internet dropped out today, so I'm at Panera Bread... again while writing this blog and hopefully I can make another huge dent in my CCR. 

    The picture below is a sneak peek of what my presentation process looks like!

    

    I'm nervous to edit this because it is going to be such a pain to have to align the audio since I was thinking of recording the audio first and then separately screen recording the visuals. I know that sounds like making the process more complicated than it actually is, but I feel like I would be too overwhelmed and get frustrated fast if I were to do both at the same time. We will see, I'll try out both ways and see what sticks.

Editing DONE

    Yesterday, I got home from a vacation and finished adding credits to my film opening. This means, that my film opening is done! Of course, I may make minuscule changes as I rewatch it another fifty times, but the overall is finished. 

Adding Credits

    Adding credits to my opening was a lot harder than I expected it to be. I guess I kinda did that to myself because I wanted to tit be a very specific way. Basically, I could have easily used iMovie's text feature, but each title had this really cheesy fade (or other transition) at the beginning and end of the text, which I did not like because it just makes it seem less professional. I tried to find a way to get rid of the transition but I could not find a successful solution, so I found another way to add text. 

    Well, this Youtube video gave me another way to add text. Shoutout to the creator of that tutorial because I would've been stuck for a long time. Although it was slightly annoying, what I had to do was make a Google Slides and write the credits and then make the background green, and then make it a green screen image on iMovie. This had some annoying quirks to it. For example, having to arrange the text in a specific spot so that it would fit in the right place on the actual opening. I also found that saving the slide as a PNG makes the quality slightly poorer than just taking a screenshot of the slide itself, so I had to take a lot of screenshots. Making the credits took a lot of trial and error, but we made it.

Production Name

    I named the production company "Hugo Productions" and you might be wondering where "Hugo Productions" came from, it simply comes from my favorite book "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" by Taylor Jenkins Reid. It's an amazing book, I recommend it to everyone! The name was so fitting, I got paranoid that the name already exists, but a quick Google search proves that the name is authentic. 

What's Next?

    The final piece of the project would be the CCR. I am a little scared for this part because this seems like a bigger job to edit than the film opening. I'm creating a document to attach all my thoughts. I really want to try to use examples from real films like I saw in an example CCR, but we will cross that bridge when we get there.

Editing

    Alright, as I said in my previous posting, the timing is still an issue. I was able to cut it down to 2 minutes and 37 seconds, so if I can somehow find a way to get rid of 7 seconds then I will be golden. I figured out the best way to cut down clips was to make them like jump cuts, I'm trying to use them sparingly but shoutout to whoever created jumpcuts because I would be screwed without them. 

    Like a true professional, I use iMovie to edit. It's just way too tempting. Considering that I basically grew up using iMovie, and the software is so easy to use, I cannot find myself using any other software. I know that if I were to pursue a career in media, then yes, I will move on from iMovie, but for me, a novice, I will stick to what I know (shoutout to Mrs. Stoklosa for engraving that into the brains of all her students). Anyway, the photo below shows the progress I have made so far in editing.

    Overall, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I just need to work on shortening it and then I will be done with the film opening! Hopefully, I can finish this up tonight or tomorrow.